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Giving Sex Advice: Harder Than it Looks

Just a note to let you know I've been filling in for Dan Savage over at The Stranger this week, giving sex advice. Here's yesterday's final entry, which I think expresses an important point about questioning the "naturalness" of long-term monogamy without dismissing it as a viable, legitimate approach to life. You can read my other advice via the links to Savage Love Letter of the Day.

There it is this fictitious far future era when finally human reproduction is carried out by artificial means and when, after a long cultural evolution whose details don’t matter to the story, homosexuality has become the only socially accepted approach to sexual life.
In this context, some Bryan Christopher and his, in this case, male partner Cecil Jaytah publish Straight into Sex, a magnificent essay that provides overwhelming evidence that humans are naturally heterosexual: male’s penis and female’s vagina are very well adapted to each other (and many more anatomical and physiological facts pointing to the same direction), all our mammal ancestors are mainly heterosexual (and much more biological evidence), none of the few and small remaining pre-modern cultures exhibit anything like exclusive homosexuality (and more anthropological material supporting the argument) and, what the hell, all the evidence that can be gathered by anyone willing to open his or her eyes frankly to that post-modern society: all that heterosexual porn in internet, all that heterosexual straying, all those politicians resigning after being caught in a hetero affair, etc. So the case is clear: homosexuality is a cultural invention brought in after the arrival of fully artificial reproduction and superimposed over a naturally heterosexual background.
Good for its authors, Straight into Sex starts a vigorous debate on sexuality in that society. Many people say Yes! That’s it! Good bye to all that hypocrisy!. Others, maybe the most conservative, react strongly against a case that seems to question one of the pillars of the civilization. But there is a significant fraction of men and women that feel somehow confused with that debate: they feel quite comfortable with their sexual lifes despite they fit perfectly with the social prejudice: no trace of those urges brought on by their supposed heterosexual nature. There is, for example, that one that signs as Boring Homosexual in a question posted in a blog where Bryan Christopher is temporarily giving sex advice to readers. Is that B.H. naturally heterosexual?

There it is this fictitious far future era when finally human reproduction is carried out by artificial means and when, after a long cultural evolution whose details don’t matter to the story, homosexuality has become the only socially accepted approach to sexual life.
In this context, some Bryan Christopher and his, in this case, male partner Cecil Jaytah publish Straight into Sex, a magnificent essay that provides overwhelming evidence that humans are naturally heterosexual: male’s penis and female’s vagina are very well adapted to each other (and many more anatomical and physiological facts pointing to the same direction), all our mammal ancestors are mainly heterosexual (and much more biological evidence), none of the few and small remaining pre-modern cultures exhibit anything like exclusive homosexuality (and more anthropological material supporting the argument) and, what the hell, all the evidence that can be gathered by anyone willing to open his or her eyes frankly to that post-modern society: all that heterosexual porn in internet, all that heterosexual straying, all those politicians resigning after being caught in a hetero affair, etc. So the case is clear: homosexuality is a cultural invention brought in after the arrival of fully artificial reproduction and superimposed over a naturally heterosexual background.
Good for its authors, Straight into Sex starts a vigorous debate on sexuality in that society. Many people say Yes! That’s it! Good bye to all that hypocrisy!. Others, maybe the most conservative, react strongly against a case that seems to question one of the pillars of the civilization. But there is a significant fraction of men and women that feel somehow confused with that debate: they feel quite comfortable with their sexual lifes despite they fit perfectly with the social prejudice: no trace of those urges brought on by their supposed heterosexual nature. There is, for example, that one that signs as Boring Homosexual in a question posted in a blog where Bryan Christopher is temporarily giving sex advice to readers. Is that B.H. naturally heterosexual?